FGCU, commissioners break ground for "iHub" research park

When a set of gold-painted shovels delved into the sandy soil just north of Alico Road on Wednesday, that was the message a group of developers, university administrators and local elected officials were clearly trying to send.

With the groundbreaking of the Florida Gulf Coast University Innovation Hub, the group of public and private interests is hoping to usher Southwest Florida into a new era.

"This project is truly about the future, and it's much bigger than just the future of Southwest Florida," said Congressman Connie Mack, who made the keynote address at the ground breaking ceremony Wednesday. "It's the future of the state, and frankly, it's the future of our nation. The potential for the technologies to grow out of this partnership are huge."

The 241-acre site, expected to be built out to about 1.2 million square feet of research and retail space, is located just north of Alico Road in Fort Myers, and backs up to the southern side of Southwest Florida International Airport. Nicknamed the iHub, the research park is being billed as a haven for green energy innovation.

"It's going to be a key piece defining Southwest Florida and Fort Myers and Lee County," said university President Wilson Bradshaw. "It will not always be anymore about construction and tourism. Certainly, those will be there, and agriculture will be there, but now this is a new dimension."

In the park, FGCU will have its own building, expected to cost the university $12 million, and it will back up to an oblong-shaped lake that will eventually become a "solar lake" — a solar field on water. John Backe, one of the developers and backers of the project, said his partner, Rich Galvano, is in talks with a German company that can drill into the lake's limestone bed to establish the pillars for solar panels.

Once in place, those panels would generate the 5 million megawatts of electricity necessary to power the park.

Galvano has declined to say what companies his firm, Galvano Development, is currently courting, though he said he is preparing agreements with several companies interested in taking up residence in one of the 38 lots. Nine of those lots are zoned for commercial use.

Lee County Commissioner Tammy Hall said the park will have good company, with energy firm Algenol at the western end of Alico Road. She called Algenol the first piece in what she predicted would be a regional domino effect. The Lee County commission voted in February to invest $10 million in the Bonita Springs-based biofuel company.

Galvano has likened the creation of the iHub to North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, established in 1959, and now the largest research park in the U.S.

"The Research Triangle in Raleigh-Durham started the same way this did, with private developers, a university and a local government," Galvano said earlier this week. "It's very important that developers stand behind this, because it will develop not just in that area, but it will grow the region."

Hall called it Southwest Florida's very own "research diamond," the nexus between the iHub, the airport to the north, the university to the south and Algenol to the west.

When fully built, Backe said the site will support 6,000 direct jobs and another 3,000 indirect jobs — with outside businesses like restaurants fostered by the nearby park.

However, even research parks like the one in North Carolina are not immune to recession. In February, Research Triangle Park-based drug maker GlaxoSmithKline announced layoffs of 4,000 people, including an undisclosed number of research jobs in North Carolina.

But Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah said that does not mean it is time to rethink creating research opportunities in Florida — far from it.

"This should have been done decades ago," he said. "Without it, we won't have a recovery. It's about advancing the economy of this area."